Things I Think…
1. Over the weekend I read a biography of Faron Young.
That name just registered with about 1% of my readers…
Faron Young was country singer who was popular from the 50’s through the late 70’s…one of my favorites.
He died by his own hand in the 90’s.
Like most of my heroes, Young was a wild man, prone to excess in drinking and behavior, but incredibly gifted as well.
As you read his bio you alternately love him, despise him, and pity him.
He lived his music as most country singers did in one way or another, as did those who listened to the music.
The songs were often about hard drinking and hard living, but they were also about relationships, heartbreak, and life as we once knew it.
They assumed that people were hard working, were people of some vestige of faith, looking for love in the traditional sense.
They assumed an understanding of right and wrong.
We loved that music because we shared those “values” to some degree.
All my heroes are dead now, (save the wildest one of all) and so is the culture that supported them.
I’m not feeling so good myself…
Before I return to the soulless world of today I pause and wonder if the culture, like my ol’ buddy Faron, ended it all the same way…
2. None of my heroes could make it today…they’d be buried in a wave of politically correct condemnation. Faron, Cash, Jerry Lee, Bowden, Kennedy…they all were unique individuals in touch with the primal souls of men. They said and did things one ought not do or say because the fire made their brilliance flame forth. We no longer value the unique or the brilliant…only the tepid and strange…
3. Country music, the blues, and early rock and roll all spoke to the human condition as it is in a fallen world and longed for better… it was, in a way, “biblical”…much of todays music speaks profanely and approvingly of things that a prior generation knew needed to be repented of. What difference does this make? You are what you eat…
4. The great divide in our country is not between the left and right or between the pious and the sinner…it’s between our definitions of right and wrong…or the fact that we’re not allowed to define either..
5. There was a day when brilliant idiosyncrasy was tolerated..now, Salome dances with the head of John the Baptist on “American Idol”…
6. In other thoughts…I don’t take a backseat to anyone in my contempt for this President…but speaking of impeachment easily and profanely disrespects the office and sows the seeds of future system failure…
7. The Bears kicker missed a last second field goal and was roundly hated on by social media and raucously booed by the fans…who evidently have never blown anything in their lives…
8. Alabama by 14…
9. My life was not negatively impacted because I was unaware of every awful thing someone I looked up to said or did…
10. Yes, I am ranting like the (now proverbial) old man telling people to get off his lawn…I’ll read better stuff next week…
Postmodernity means almost nothing and virtually everything is permitted and righteous.
BD,
Indeed…and we’ll learn the very hard way that the world doesn’t work that way…or our kids will…
My grandparents had six children, the youngest boy was their wild child and, in some ways, their dearest… 2 of his children were Chuck Smith converts who brought their dad to Christ
#4 is the crux of satan’s big victory today…. or so it seems to me
Em,
Satan hasn’t won anything…he just thinks he has.
I think he’s overplayed his hand…again…
People who “take to twitter”, or whatever social media avenue is in vogue this hour, to waste their time and energy to spout off on someone they don’t know for something that doesn’t amount to jack squat in the end… these people I’m beginning to feel truly sorry for.
Not all my heroes are saved individuals either. But I learned that I can’t look to Contemporary Christian Music, since the late Rich Mullins anyways, for heroes in the faith because none of them are really transparent with their struggles. They would lose their audience if they said more than the usual “yeah, I don’t read my Bible everyday “ or “sometimes I speed”. They are too whitewashed in their image.
I’m no fan of the President Trump either, and I think that the profanity from an elected official recently towards Donald Trump is sad, but from my wanderings online her sentiments are not shocking nor surprising.
Now get off my lawn you young whipper-snappers!!!
Dan,
I’m a friend to a lot of pastors…because they know they don’t have to fake it with me.
We all struggle and some us will enter heaven “smelling like smoke”…and maybe a hint of Old Crow…
DFG,
LOL especially about the whipper snappers.
I agree with you about Xn artists. I almost can’t stand listening to them on Xn radio. It all
seems so sanitized and not very real world. But maybe that’s just me.
I have a Twitter account but just go on to follow some experts and people more famous than myself.
Michael,
I think most of us, if not all, will have NOTHING to say to God on the order of “but I…”. We will smell of smoke. Standing before God will be the Great Leveling Field.
bob1,
Thanks! You are not the only one. I just can’t relate to them, and not just because they are musicians for a living. Re; twitter..in the spirit of full disclosure, although I don’t have a twitter account, I too do peruse a few twitter accounts…mainly of a few musicians I like to see what they are up to and when they new music is coming out.
#4
It took Em and Michael to flesh it out – it is literally the cross of the matter. Our standard of righteousness and evil vs His. Satan has done as was told to us and has inverted the whole issue.
#1 the wildest of them all… ? Willie? Kristofferson? Too young to really know. But seventies country was the golden age, imo.
New “old” sound has made a little comeback, check out Whitey Morgan and the 78’s.
GooglePlay makes a decent radio mix if you search that band.
“Alabama by 14…”
Close.
No, Michael and Josh, what was close was that field goal attempt by the Bears. 🙂
I was in complete exhilaration when I realized the second doink had bounced out in front of the uprights and had not gone through, but then I also felt bad for the kicker afterwards. What people have done to him is just terrible.
I hope we are realizing that all social media lynchings are wrong.
Josh,
I think those lynchings are the new normal that will eventually require a new set of laws…
Ah, today’s politically correct sports world. Back in the day the daily papers (and some cities had 6 dailies) would roast you as the goat of the game and fans would set fire and hang you in effigy. But you are too young.
How about Bill Buckner? It took him 20 yrs to get back into Boston. The kicker is probably with his family down in the Bahamas on winter vacation ignoring it all.
It’s just too easy to destroy lives now. No trial, jury…or even good reason. Just aim, and shoot.
“Over the weekend I read a biography of Faron Young.
That name just registered with about 1% of my readers…”
That may be the only time in my life I’m counted among the one percent 🙂
BrianD,
We’re elite… 🙂